


Good Intentions

by anamatics



Category: Bishoujo Senshi Sailor Moon | Pretty Guardian Sailor Moon (TV)
Genre: Established Relationship, F/F, Holidays, Post-Canon, Spiritual
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-04-20
Updated: 2011-04-20
Packaged: 2017-10-18 10:20:44
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,315
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/187884
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/anamatics/pseuds/anamatics
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After the seriousness of their summer, Christmastime comes perhaps too easily for Rei and Minako.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Good Intentions

They are not religious in this sense.

She says she is, with a closed-off smile and a voice that soars high and clear into the rafters of the old stone church. It is the season for this sort of thing regardless, and she is going to sing the words to the carols in a language she doesn't fully understand. There is a certain wonderment that she likes in the solitude of standing with so many other people. She is alone before the eyes of this God – and it is a feeling that she understands far better than most.

The dead heat of summer claimed her life.

She came back with the cooling rain of the autumn by the grace of one who was not God, but at that moment, held all of his power in her young hands.

She is grateful to be back, but she is not religious in the sense that she can go through the motions of this foreign and strange church - this truly bizarre and gothic structure that scars the landscape of her home.

Though a haven for lost souls, she wonders if they are perhaps misplaced. The missionaries left this place long ago, and now it is only an empty shell.

Still she sings the carols; she praises a child born to humble circumstances that would grow to change the world. She thinks it funny, that she knows a young girl, just like him, who, too, has struggled and succeeded in changing the world.

* * *

These are some of the longest nights of the year, and she takes comfort in that blankness, because she knows that daylight brings on a new set of challenges and complications to her life that she will only find irritating. They're still so young – but their innocence that so is encapsulated by these long dark nights before spring comes has been stolen away.

She longs to have it back.

A small candle in the window – this is a Shinto shrine, yet she knows that it will make _her_ happy when she comes by later. Not that she is religious in this sense either.

There is small gift in a bag sitting on her desk and she casts a worried glance in its direction.

I hope she likes it.

She's deluding herself when she says this, because she already knows that it will be cherished. The few things they chose to give each other are reminders of what happened back then – before this tradition of yuletide cheer and gift giving.

Then they rarely spoke, and the gifts carried deeper meanings across their cultures.

Messages of intent that spoke volumes of their underlying need for each other, their desperation and their longing; even now it was barely hidden.

She smiled, for gifts at this time of year were things that the nuns at school said were vital to the salvation of her soul – that without honoring their savior's birth, she was damning herself for eternity.

She had already been to hell, and she had already been saved.

The light of the moon fell across her face and she resolved to not let her own misgivings about the season ruin this moment. She had another chance, and in this season, that was enough for her.

* * *

There is a gift in her pocket, she fingers it, knowing that it will be accepted with a glare and not a smile – the intent behind the gift should be obvious. Not that they haven't done it many times before, but stating intent on this holiest of nights seems oddly appropriate. They would have been at a ball in the past life, but that world is long forgotten here and now.

A small candle in the window – I thought she didn't like this holiday?

She was a priestess, it would make sense on some level – and Minako had taken away her ability to ever be a _maiden_ again. She grinned; the conquest was a great one, but a meaningful one. She loved every minute of their dance, and now she was carrying it to a further level. This gift should prove that.

Gifts have double meanings, even in this life.

"Merry Christmas," she sings out, it is the end of a carol that they do not sing in church, as it is not that holy of a song. She taps on the window, and hears a quiet rustle from the other side.

Before the window can even slide open, she is hit with the peaceful and powerful smell that comes from inside. It is a shrine, a place of worship, and the incense smells far better here than at the cold stone building where she listened to the service. Perhaps it is the smell of evergreen that gets to her, for she has never liked it. "Why can't you use the door like a normal person?"

She raises her eyebrows, for the answer to that question is well known between the two of them. There is no way, not even at this late hour, that someone of her standing could knock on the door of a humble shrine and beg entry. It simply was not done.

The gift is out of her pocket and into her host's hands before the window is firmly shut behind her.

"Merry Christmas Reiko," she says, a sad smile on her lips as though she too is deluding herself to the possibility that this holiday can actually mean something other than the rebirth of the year – of the moon – of the world.

Rei looks at the gift in her hands and points to her desk, where a small gift is waiting for her to open as well.

It seemed that two could play the game, and she smiled, collecting the gift in her lap. "I see you understand intent."

"Without a ball though which to claim your hand, how was I to ensure that it would be mine for the evening?" There is a certain wickedness and distain in her companion's voice, for those of her planet have never been ones for such formalities. They take what they consider to be theirs, when they want it.

She secretly loves that feeling of possession, but will never, ever, let on to it.

"You could always just ask," she says, grinning wickedly.

Words are not often spoken between them – meaningful words even less so.

They are too dependent on their other ways of communicating to stoop to such levels of petty talk, even though they act like perpetual children because of it. There is a level of tension between them that comes from the dichotomy of their two cultures, and how even now, with similar cultural origins, they are still diametrically opposed in almost every sense.

The Gods and Goddesses of Venus would tell her that this is why they are so drawn to each other – and the priest in the church would say that it was the God of this world that willed their two souls together. There was nothing in this world's religions about opposites and their desperate need for each other.

And so it would come to pass that she would push the girl standing across from her into doing things that she did not quite understand time and time again. It wasn't a game; it was a necessity of their survival.

She didn't think that one of them could live without the other, and from what the others had confided in her after they had all been saved, she was not alone in this assumption.

She needs her, they need each other. She says words, not even thinking, flattery and acceptance of the intent of this warrior before her.

Mars' lips – Reiko's lips – so different from those of Hino Rei, and yet exactly the same are on her own now; all that Aino Minako can lament is that she never got the chance to open her present.


End file.
